This was our first game and I think we may have played this one wrong.I built the Ludus Magna (by chance) and I managed to habe 4 merchant clients quite early so I plyaed the rest of the game playing 4 times everytime a role was lead. I won by a very large margin of points as I could build many structures and I could put in the voult a lot more valuable cards.

We played the EACH merchant client can be a wildcard clint for ANY role.Did we play it wrong ?

This was our first game and I think we may have played this one wrong.I built the Ludus Magna (by chance) and I managed to habe 4 merchant clients quite early so I plyaed the rest of the game playing 4 times everytime a role was lead. I won by a very large margin of points as I could build many structures and I could put in the voult a lot more valuable cards.

We played the EACH merchant client can be a wildcard clint for ANY role.Did we play it wrong ?

Thank you

Each Merchant client does indeed count as any role with the Ludus Magna. However, I've yet to see anyone manage to get 4 merchant clients at all (let alone "quite early"). As you say this is a very powerful position but it's not easy to achieve and something the other players should be able to prevent quite easily (unless you had also built an aqueduct - or a bar in the original version - and also drew enough merchant and patron cards to get them into your clientelle in the first place)

I was lucky with marbles with my first hand of cards and I built the Ludus Magna as my fist structure, later (but early) I acquired one merchant client which I used a lot, and later (more than half thru the game) I got two more merchants clients in a single patron round (the first one with my parton and the second one with my wild card merchant client).With three of these and some other "normal" patron I was able to build structures in a single turn (even more than one once!) and to flip many cards into the vault.A player tried to build a prison to steal my Ludus Magna, but I had a prison half built too, just in case....

Obviously this was our first game and probably next time we will watch out for a Ludus Magna, but I still think it's kind of overpowered.

Merchant clients are very strong even without the Ludus Magna, because it is the role that generates points most efficiently. I very rarely see the merchant role played with an actual blue card: it's usually a jack instead, to prevent the next player from being able to patron a merchant into their clientele from the pool. From reading others' comments, this game does seem very prone to "groupthink"; that is, different groups of players will have different opinions on what is overpowered due to differing playstyles. (Differ, differ, differ! )

Obviously this was our first game and probably next time we will watch out for a Ludus Magna, but I still think it's kind of overpowered.

As Kester said, it's not the Ludus Magna you want to watch out for, it's the merchant cards in the pool which allow people to add merchants to their clientelle. It's also very rare in our games that merchants are led, at least until the end game

I'll just chime in that the issue was the Merchants. Someone with a merchant client advantage can focus on building up a stockpile (and vault space) and then merchant a few times in the mid- to end- game to build a huge vault.

The Ludus Magna makes a strong position stronger.

And, like any building that takes 4 actions (and a graft-tastic material) to build, it should be strong. Look at the some of the other 3 buildings -- Catacombs, Forum, Colliseum ... all powerful.

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of discussion. - Plato.

Just got the game and played several multi player solo rounds to learn game. Did I misunderstand something? It was my interpertation that when you used a client as a role it was placed in the pool at the end of the round. Page 5 of my rules state on point 5: "Once all players have finished, move all Order cards played as roles off the Camps into the Pool." This would mean that you wouldn't have the 4 merchants to keep using each time.

Edit: Okay, I re-read the example on that same page and I do think I was wrong. In the example the client of player number 1 is not disgarded. I guess one probably shouldn't read rules at midnight.